Guerilla Convict Writer

The devil has many mansions- FCI El Reno, FCI Petersburg, USP Atlanta, FCI Manchester, FCI Beckley, FTC Oklahoma City, USP Lewisburg, FCI Fort Dix, MDC Brooklyn, FCI Fairton, FCI Gilmer, FCI Loretto- and he wants me to visit them all. Been down 16 years in the feds. Since 1993 and they still ain’t broke me. I am the ‘real. The Guerrilla Convict Writer.

These feds is lunching. Giving me diesel therapy and the like. But you can’t shake the kid. Got me a 25 year mandatory-minimum sentence. Kingpin status, obstruction of justice, US Marshal’s Top 15 most w anted list and all that. The white boy goes hard. Ain’t no faking it. Death before dishonor, you heard.

And it’s my mind, my ideas, my opinions- that scare the Bureau of Prisons to death. In 2001, while chilling at the low-security prison at Fort Dix in New Jersey, I wrote a little article, “A White Boyz Tale”, for Don Diva magazine. Just a little piece voicing my opinion and my desire to see the day when they hold the Drug War Crime Trials. You know, like the Nuremburg trials, where they tried the Nazi’s for war crimes committed in World War II.

So in my article I gave voice to the idea of this idea happening in future America. Spieled it right out for them. My own little coup d’etat, so to speak. I mean the Nazi’s never thought they’d be held accountable, right? But they were and I guess my allusion in Don Diva hit home. The reference to a hypothetical future event, voiced by a prisoner of that same drug war with a quarter of a century sentence for a first-time, non-violent offense struck a resounding chord with the BOP bureaucrats.

My thinking was, no harm, no foul, right? I mean this is America. Land of the free and home of the brave. The First Amendment, liberty and justice for all. But I underestimated my keepers and in the post 9/11 world I was branded a threat to the orderly running of the institution and shipped back to a medium-security prison. Not for something I did, but for my opinion. That was written, not in a prison circulated newsletter but in a free world publication. So much for freedom of speech.

It’s been two years since that retaliatory transfer by the BOP and I’m still feeling the repercussions for what I wrote. The first six months were vicious. In and out of the hole for fictitious incident reports and SIS investigations, constant staff harassment and ridicule, and the over-zealous censorship and monitoring of my mail and phone calls. Effectively the BOP tried to bully me into not writing for publication. I was the target of an all-out intimidation campaign as they tried to cut-off my communication with the outside world .

But fuck that, ain’t no faking it, the kid goes hard. I was sentenced to more time then how old I was. Became a man inside these fences, you heard. And to that end I filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the BOP’s retaliation against me for exercising my First Amendment rights. Ferranti vs. The Bureau of Prisons, 03-4, 3rd Circuit. I just hope that we are far enough removed from the 9/11 hysteria and Ashcroft’s attacks on civil liberties that I can get a fair shake in the courts. But we will see.

It will be interesting to find out if federal prisoners have First Amendment rights in this changing political climate. And if they do, how will they be defined? It could be a landmark case in the fight for prisoner’s rights. Because for real, censorship is un-American. And wasn’t this country founded on political dissent? My story proves the old maxim though, the pen truly is mightier then the sword. Enough said.

Kilo’s of cocaine and herion, millions of dollars of drug money, luxury customized cars, dime pieces galore, bling-bling to shine, multitudes of violence and vicious murder- these dudes were street stars and their lifestyles are what gangsta rap represents. Read their stories and ride shotgun with a hood legend.